Tag: yarn

A few weeks ago I went with the kids on a church outing to Avon Valley Country Park. They had great fun down these scary slides:

while I sat in the cafe and chatted and drank tea.

There are a lot of animals there, including Jacob and Soay sheep and angora goats. After a hairy boat ride where DS1 and DS2 rowed me around (an adult was required otherwise I would have foregone the pleasure), I went and regained my calm by having a walk around to look at the animals. The kids meanwhile hared off to the go-karts…

Jacob sheep:

Soay sheep (had to crop this photo because they wouldn’t come any closer!):

Yes, it’s finished! It knit up really quickly once I got going. I nearly ran out of dyed wool though – it was good that I dyed the two extra skeins last week because I needed them. This is all that was left of the dyed wool (apart from the Kool Aid dyed stuff and about 8 oz of undyed which I’ve earmarked for indigo or henna or something that doesn’t need a mordant). I bought 2lbs of it altogether so the bag is pretty heavy!

The brown roving is the one I dyed with St Johns Wort (and copper mordant). The thinner wool is what the skeins were tied up with!

Here is the finished bag before felting:

I decided to make the handles as in the French Market bag in Knitty rather than a shoulder strap which was what the pattern I used called for. I was glad I did because I think it looks better that way.

Here is the finished bag! I ended up washing it at 60 and then at 90 (thanks, Helen!) on a short cycle each time, then I spun it contrary to the pattern instructions because I didn’t want to wait DAYS for it to dry out and I finished it off for 5 minutes or so in the dryer to fluff it up a bit.

I like the way the colours have changed with the felting. The browns look much more greenish and the reds stand out nicely.

This is the other side of the bag. And underneath:

And a close up!

At present it is sitting on the floor stuffed with towels to give it a nice rounded shape!

And here is some more yarn being brought to a simmer – this has a mishmash of St Johns wort, the remains of the onion skin dyebath and a couple of nettle teabags which I chucked in for good measure! Talk about unscientific… The yarn has been mordanted with copper.

It actually turned out a mid brown colour and is drying upstairs as I type. Photo later.

Here is the half knitted to-be-felted bag. I have still got about 30 rows to do and the yarn is disappearing at an alarming rate!

You will notice I have tweaked the blog colour a bit and made a few changes and additions to the sidebar. If you find it isn’t behaving itself for you, do let me know.

I had a nice day out on Saturday. DS1 and 3 were camping so I went to the Royal Welsh Showground at Builth Wells for Wonderwool Wales.

I went by train on the Heart of Wales line, which is probably the most picturesque rail journey in Wales, winding its way through from Shropshire to Swansea. At the railway station I got on, you had to hail the driver for him to stop the train, like getting on a bus!

The show was fun – it was part of the Smallholders’ show but I mostly stayed in the Wonderwool area. There were lots of yummy fibres and yarns, and lots of local producers and processors of the fibres. And craftspeople from all over the UK.

There were also animals there! Here are a couple of alpacas which I fell in love with!

And lots of different sorts of British sheep, which I found fascinating because up to now I thought sheep were sheep and didn’t realise they were so different and individual.

These are Ryeland sheep. They have such sweet faces. A lady there told me that apparently their wool doesn’t felt, which makes it useful if you don’t want it to!

This is the Wensleydale longwool – its wool was very soft!

This is the Jacobs sheep. There were lots of other coloured sheep there with different variations of colours between black, grey, browns as well as whites. I wished at this point that I wasn’t travelling on the train because it precluded me buying lots of fibre but I did buy a drop spinning kit from Hedgehog Equipment who are based near Abergavenny which isn’t that far from Newport. I picked up lots of leaflets with links to websites so I can find them again readily if I take to it!

There were also angora goats in another of the sheds. At least, I hope they are angora goats – I get very confused with the non-wool fibres…

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Hello. My name's Liz Plummer and I'm an artist based in Newport, South Wales, UK, I love dyeing, printing, painting and stitching.
This blog is about the influences on my work, inspiration, my daily life,
and the processes of creating. Enjoy!